Tag Archives: thornbury

Gig Log

03-01-2018 – Virus At 2018 O’clock

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…And a Happy Noo Year to all our readers!

We hope all had nearly as much fun as we did over the festering season (but not quite as much, obviously, that simply wouldn’t be right).

I’d report back on the gigs we played, but it’s all a bit of a blur really… I do recall that Christmas Eve in the Sandringham in Downend was huge fun, very nice place and a definitely silly crowd – we ended up stretching the second set out to the best part of 2 hours…

Just after Xmas, poor Emma succumbed to a Horrible Throat Lurgy that left her unable to even speak (she even had to send me text messages in mime), which put a couple of gigs in jeopardy. Since we didn’t fancy gigs in Jeopardy (or anywhere else abroad) we were very lucky to have talented daughter Lily step into the breach and cover for us. An absolute lifesaver, and very fortunate that she was both available and in need of the money! READ MORE

Gig Log

09-10-2017 – The Laughing Chaffinch

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Aye oop!

Well, we had a rather spiffing Saturday evening at the Swan up in Thornbury; a chance to give my “official gigging amp head” a rant after several weeks in hospital; it’s like having a new amp, at least in that I can’t quite remember what all the foot switch controls do, which led to one or two rather interesting moments, when I cut into what should have been a screaming rawk solo, but accidentally tried to play it with an gentle acoustic timbre…

Still, I wasn’t the only one struggling a bit; in the very first number, there’s a moment where the whole band stop, and there’s a vocal cue that we all come back in after. Somebody in the crowd was singing along, but massively out of time, and Stuart, momentarily distracted, decided to go with them rather than with Emma. Oopsie. He made up for it later on, though, by simply totally forgetting what to play midway through a song, settling instead for banging a few drums at random, with a delightfully nonplussed expression on his little chops. READ MORE

Gig Log

03-10-2017 – Ol’ Sparkly Ears

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‘Sup dudes? – as we young people say…

Another weekend, another round of gigging silliness… Following a rather successful jaunt with my retro-prog-acid-rock chums the All Night Chemists, playing an afternoon set at a lovely little festival in the Forest Of Dean – a fine “proper festival” event, not a normal person in sight – it was down to central Bristol for a jaunt to the rather less unconventional (i.e. lager-swilling) Molloy’s.

When I stop on the way to pick up Emma, I am moved to ask our silver-larynx-ed heroine why she is wearing a pair of sparkly black cat’s ears on her head. She looks puzzled. “I think the question is”, she replies, “Why aren’t YOU wearing a pair of sparkly black cat’s ears on your head?” I have to concede this is a reasonable point. READ MORE

Gig Log

21-08-2017 – Trouserless Combat Vomiting

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Ahoy there shipmates!

So nice to be out playing again, I think we can put last weekend firmly into the “damned good fun” box for safe keeping.

Following a pleasing night at the Rolly in Swindon – where sadly we missed our regular local maniac Mad Freddy, but instead were treated to Mad Dancing Andy Warhol, and a definitely enthusiastic crowd – it was on the following night to the Swan in Thornbury for a jolly family knees-up.

Since Dem and Lil were away, it seemed best to bring my two youngest lads along and play a few songs with them, with a combination of Ben & Emma on vocals, plus young Joe making his public vocal debut on one of his favourite Green Day numbers. Whilst playing bass. So, that’s one of my offspring simultaneously doing two things that I can’t do. Evolution in action. READ MORE

Gig Log

14-08-2017 – The Holy Guitarist

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Hola, mes amigos!

Right, so after a weekend over which I’m pretty sure I didn’t even touch a guitar – being too busy as I was constructing a temple in the back garden, the reasons for which I am sure Dem will be able to explain to me in due course – we have little to report this week (I’m assuming here that a detailed itinerary of my dealings with timber merchants and a catalogue of minor injuries sustained during the building process will be of only minor interest).

However, we do have a nice, normal two-gig weekend coming up to look forward to… READ MORE

Gig Log

05-06-2017 – New Amp Optimism With Added Singer

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Hola homeys…

Apologies that I didn’t get around to sending one of these out last week, I’ve been feeling a bit poorly. Gifts of flowers, cards, sympathy, and particularly cash, will all be welcome.

I’ve not, however, been as poorly as my equipment, which seems to be taking great delight in letting me down at gigs*, whilst nonchalantly behaving itself at practices and during prolonged fault-finding engineering investigations. Nonetheless, having gone through absolutely every item in the signal chain between my guitar strings and the victim’s ear holes, and replaced a whole bunch of components – connectors, leads, jack sockets, etc, I think that actually I may be on top of things again. READ MORE

Gig Log

22-05-2017 – When Nothing Goes To Plan!

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Hey gang

You ever get a week when nothing goes to plan?

Yup, me too.

We didn’t manage to fit a rehearsal in this week, due to a series of unplanned crises, but nonetheless I still managed to bugger up my nice shiny new amp; it’s suddenly started making a noise like a hornet’s nest, and since I’ve already replaced all the valves, this can mean only one thing – an expensive repair bill…

Still, while it’s out of action, we can still gig, because foresighted Alan has not one but two spare amps he can take along; thus equipped, we rolled up on Saturday to a rather nice venue in Dursley, where we are shown into a small bar area, which we immediately just know is going to be acoustically a bit messy. READ MORE

Gig Log

05-09-2016 – The Lamb Files

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Well, we’re back, did you miss us?

After a week’s jolly holidays away in (occasionally) sunny North Wales – during which, due to an unfortunate incident involving lack of foresight and a sinking kayak*, my beloved Dem and I achieved the notable distinction of being the highest people in the land whilst not wearing any pants – it was back to the lovely Swan in Thornbury, to see if we can remember how any of the songs go.

The answer was a resounding “some of them”.

Still, it was an absolute pleasure to get back together and make a raucous racket again, and a delight to see our chums John, Anne & Adam, who’d rolled all the way down from Gloucester to see us. Bless. We were so touched, we got a little carried away and threw in a rather epic AC/DC encore, complete with rubber duck solos. I’d forgotten that we sometimes do that. READ MORE

Gig Log

22-08-2016 – It’s A Bit Like The Archers – BUT ON ACID

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Greetings, my little peccadillos!

Now, that was enough rawk’n’roll fun to last anybody a fortnight… which is just as well, since we’re not playing for a couple of weeks, since I’m running away to Exotic Foreign Parts.

Still, we’ll have plenty of fun to look back on – particularly last Wednesday’s outing to Priddy, hidden way down deep in the Mendips.

So – a midweek gig, in the middle of nowhere – we weren’t expecting a particularly exciting night, to be honest. READ MORE

Gig Log

13-06-2016 – Carry On Football

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Hello playmates!

Well, as it seems that summer is over now (again), but it’s certainly nice to be out and gigging again. Saturday’s jaunt to the Cat & Wheel was interesting; we rolled up around 8:00 to find the place was rammed with people watching the footy – to the extent that they were turning folks away at the door. They let us in though – and thus became a campaign of attrition, as we slowly hauled in the kit, and inch by inch deployed what we could, slowly driving the footy fans back towards the telly screens; by half-time we had got out as much as we could, and then stood outside in the cool air away from the deafening sound of the chimps-in-suits pundits giving their critiques of the previous forty five minutes of blokes running around in circles. READ MORE